Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to clarify that the circuit court has been asked to revisit the case.

Dumser's Dairyland stands another day after a Maryland appeals court ruled against the Town of Ocean City on Friday, sending a case of ownership back to Worcester County Circuit Court.

The case was a legal test to see who rightfully owned the land Dumser's sits on the Boardwalk near the Inlet: Ocean City or Nathans Associates, a group comprised of heirs of Nathan Rapoport, the man who built the original structure.

The debate over the rightful owners of the property started in 2016, following two 25-year contracts in which the Rapoports and their heirs had permission from Ocean City to build a structure with a shop (now Dumser's) and an apartment on the land.

When the second contract ended, Ocean City Solicitor Guy Ayres told the heirs to vacate the property. Nathans Associates, however, took the case to court, arguing they owned the property now by adverse possession.

Adverse possession is when someone occupies someone else’s property under some claim of ownership for a period of at least 20 years. Nathans Associates argued that the town had abandoned its interest in the property and, in doing so, abandoned its legal ownership.

Ocean City in return argued that the property sat within "a dedicated and accepted public easement prior to Mr. Rapoport’s acquisition of title via adverse possession." .

The ice cream shop was allowed to stay open while the legal battle went on, with many saying publicly how sad it would be to see such an iconic landmark leave the Boardwalk. Large public Facebook groups were created by those interested in saving the building as well as Dumser's.

"The public has been in our court all the way," Mona Strauss, one of the members of Nathans Associates, said Saturday. "When you embark on something like this and you have the public on your side like that, it's so gratifying."

A judge ruled in July 2017 that the town had not in fact abandoned its interest and that "all the evidence indicates a continuous public use of Atlantic Avenue since before 1904 until the present." The store would have to close and the building would have to be removed, although the court granted Nathans Associates the chance to operate Dumser's until Oct. 31 of that year. The decision was challenged.

The new court decision reverses that ruling, saying the town failed to demonstrate the property within the public easement. The decision sends the ruling back to the circuit court and has Ocean City and the mayor paying court costs.